Subj : Re: Small BBS Machines (was: Re: NTVDMx64 issues?)
To : Mindsurfer
From : tenser
Date : Thu Dec 11 2025 09:38 am
On 10 Dec 2025 at 08:28p, Mindsurfer pondered and said...
Mi> Re: Re: Small BBS Machines (was: Re: NTVDMx64 issues?)
Mi> By: tenser to Mindsurfer on Thu Dec 11 2025 07:44:06
Mi>
Mi> Mi>> Re: Re: Small BBS Machines (was: Re: NTVDMx64 issues?) By: tenser to
Mi> Mi>> Shurato on Thu Dec 11 2025 02:39:59
Mi>
Mi> Mi> te>> What about a Raspberry Pi and full-system emulation via QEMU? Y
Mi> Mi> te>> cou boot DOS, or OS/2, or whatever, and it'd probably be fast
Mi> Mi> te>> enough.
Mi>
Mi> Mi>> that would be probably good enough, except.. raspberry is not very
Mi> Mi>> efficient to run DOS or other emulations due to its processor being
Mi> Mi>> x86 compatible one.
Mi>
Mi> te> I guess the idea is predicated on not needing stellar performance for
Mi> te> BBS, which is mostly IO-bound, anyway.
Mi>
Mi> You can run a bbs on a Raspberry Pi for sure. but buying a Raspberry +
Mi> SD Card + usb power supply + storage (usb hdd/ssd) will not make a
Mi> difference to a discounted MiniPC anymore. N100 runs on very low TDP
Mi> when idle.
Mi>
Mi> what is the advantage in getting the older or less compatible hardware?
A Raspberry Pi 5 is quite capable, supports NVMe out of the box
(no SD required, except for bootstrapping), up to 16 GiB of RAM,
gigabit ethernet with a real PHY, not a USB bridge, but also
USB 3.0, HDMI output, including audio, and is physically quite
small, which was the goal for hosting in a studio apartment: note
the message subject, Small BBS Machines, as in size. Power
consumption and heat output is low, though of course other systems
are comparable. If you don't care about graphics, you can even
run it headless, with a UART for the console: this is a perennial
issue with most mini PCs, which either don't line out the SoC UART
or don't provide a (convenient) header for it.
